Count the apples

Next time you eat an apple count how many pips there are. That’s not hard. You will get a definite answer – six, seven, eight pips more or less.

Then separate one of the pips from the rest of the pips.

We know how many pips were in the apple, but how many apples are in this pip?

Of course that’s the riddle. We could plant that seed. It could grow into another tree. Seed from this new tree could then sprout even more trees. All of these trees could be then producing apples.

Who can count how many apples could be produced from this original, single, small seed?

I write this post to remind myself that each day I get the opportunity to plant a seed. A random act of kindness, writing a letter of encouragement, passing on a genuine compliment, even just a smile may seem insignificant or trivial yet, they are like the seeds in an apple. Who can count or measure the effects these small seeds will have?

Recently a person I hadn’t seen for 40 years came to see me. He told me that he’d been trying to find me for the last three or four years. He wanted to tell me about an incident that happened that had a major effect on him.

He was new to teaching and had just started at the school where I was teaching. This was a time when TVs were scarce in a school. For whatever reason, he had a large number of students in a room watching a program and a group of students were testing him out, giving him a hard time.

I happened to be passing by, saw that he was having trouble and asked him if he needed a hand. He said yes, so I showed him how to gain control by quietly but firmly asking some students to move and so breaking up the group.

For the last few years he’d been looking for me so he could tell me that, from that point forward he was much more confident, effective teacher.

When he told me told me about this incident, I could not recall it at all. For me it was a small seed. Yet it had a major effect on him, so much so that he spent years trying to find me and tell me about it.

Be encouraged! Do good things, no matter how small. You are planting seeds. . .